WHEN Bird's Eye View Film Festival director Rachel Millward hosted a school workshop recently, she was struck by one young girl's failure to see her own shining potential.

“I asked the class 'what does the director do?' and this girl shot up her hand and said 'he's the guy who's in charge,' Rachel told Run Riot this week.

“Before anything is even said there's this assumption that the director is a male. Yet this girl, who was obviously popular, clever and had her hand straight up for every question, hadn't seen herself in that leadership role.”

Not if Bird's Eye View has anything to do with it. The international women's film festival kicks off across London from Tuesday March 8 to Thursday March 17 with a jam-packed schedule of premieres, lectures, retrospectives and live performances all celebrating female filmmakers.

Now in its seventh year, the festival has grown from a short film event to a year-round programme involving training courses, opening weekend clubs and special touring events at festivals across the UK and abroad.

“I am really proud of it. I love it,” Rachel, 34, admits.

“There's such a genuine need to support female filmmakers. We get so much support from people because they really want to see this inequality change.”

Rachel, who graduated in Theology at Oxford University before studying at the African Gender Institute at the University of Cape Town, sited a tendency to pigeon-hole female directors on romance and chick-flicks and the dominance of male crews on set as some of the barriers facing women in the industry.

She said: “I think sadly it's incredibly difficult to get any film made. It takes a real steely determination to believe your film can make it on the big screen. And it is harder for women because there's less encouragement to really push it. They tend to go into roles managing men's visions rather than telling their own.”

With just 15 per-cent female film directors in the UK, the inequalities are stark. But Rachel admits it's still a big leap from the mere 7 per-cent when she and a friend first started up a small short film festival in 2002.

She said: “It's brilliant but it's still incredibly low.

“It is worse in Hollywood though. A recent study by Martha Lauzen found it wasn't getting any better there.”

It would be difficult not to attribute the UK's rise in some part to the success of Bird's Eye View, the first ever festival of its kind in the country.

It's star-studded launch last month, headed by actress Rosamund Pike, scored national coverage and introduced a programme bursting with premiere features, shorts and documentaries – all by female filmmakers.

Rachel's hot tips for the 2011 festival include closing night film Tiny Furniture, the directorial debut by Lena Dunham, featuring herself as a young arts graduate returning home to a quarter-life crisis (Thursday March 17 at the BFI Southbank).

Also headed-up are The Imperialists Are Still Alive! by Zeina Durra, a part comedy, part  commentary on an Arab artist living in post 9/11 New York (Saturday March 12 at ICA) and Orgasm Inc, directed by Liz Canner, a documentary following a sensational insider account of the pharmaceutical industry's drive to commercialise female sexuality (Saturday March 12 at ICA with panel discussion).

There's also Bloody Women, a retrospective on women's contribution to horror films (at cinemas across London, check BEV website for details) and Sound and Silents, featuring live music performances to classic silent movies (keep an eye out for Grammy award winner Imogen Heap at the Southbank Centre Queen Elizabeth Hall on Friday March 11).

With so many events, there's sure to be plenty of directors our next generation of budding female  filmmakers can aspire to.

For More Details check out:

Run Riot Film (for a selection of highlights): www.run-riot.com/film
Birds Eye View Film Festival: www.birds-eye-view.co.uk